According to the Property Services IRC’s 2019 Skills Forecast the top generic skills in demand for the Property Services industry as a whole are:
- Managerial / Leadership
- Language, Literacy and Numeracy (LLN) (Foundation skills)
- Customer service / Marketing
- Financial
- Technology.
According to job vacancy data, the top generic skills in demand in the Property Services industry are:
- Communication skills
- Detail oriented
- Planning
- Building effective relationships
- Organisational skills.
In addition, the job vacancy data identifies the most in-demand occupations as: Property Manager, Domestic Cleaner, Civil Engineer, Specialist Managers and Sales Representatives. The top employers for the sector span a number of industries and include AECOM Technology Corporation and Jones Lang Lasalle Australia, among other engineering services companies.
The Property Services IRC’s 2020 Skills Forecast identifies the major changes and opportunities for the Property Services industry as:
- Digital management and delivery systems: the industry is using more digital management systems that bring workers in different sectors into common information management and reporting systems.
- Technology: digital disruption and adaptation to new technologies across the built environment is influencing skills required to engage and utilise digital and robotic technologies.
- Regulation: heightened regulatory requirements across the built environment is an expectation of clients.
- Environment: the extent of environmental change and disasters is creating skill needs in flood and fire rectification and new challenges in the management of the built environment including hygiene skills and management.
- Consumer (and client) demand: for sustainable, green, energy efficient, and digital technologies, and convergence across these demands.
The Property Services IRC’s 2019 Skills Forecast identifies the following key drivers for change in the Property services industry:
- Social drivers including increasing urbanisation and clandestine laboratories
- Technological drivers including automation, drones and building information modelling (BIM)
- Economic drivers including growth in property services industry and consumer demands
- Environmental drivers including sustainability
- Educational drivers including convergence of industries leading to diverse skill needs
- Political drivers including compliance and regulation and the banking royal commission
Many of these drivers for change identified for 2019 are also identified as challenges and opportunities for the Property Services industry. These major challenges and opportunities identified are consistent with those identified in the 2020 update.
The industry is also increasingly feeling the effects of increased globalisation, and interest in Australian property by institutional buyers. In the real estate sales area, consumers have access to larger volumes of online property data and may bypass sales agents in favour of online channels.
The 2018 National Waste Policy identifies the need for a change to a circular economy, supporting resource recovery and recycling, and reducing the generation of waste. It highlights an opportunity for jobs growth with increased recycling levels, with 9.2 jobs created for every 10,000 tonnes of waste recycled compared to 2.8 for the same amount sent to landfill. The policy also notes that while the amount of waste produced per capita is decreasing, the quantity of waste produced nationally is increasing overall due to increasing population.
The National Waste Report 2020 explores some of the current and emerging challenges faced by the waste sector, including COVID-19 pandemic, export bans on some recovered materials (such as waste plastic, paper, glass and tyres that have not been processed into a value-added material), climate change responses and the role of single-use plastic.
For detailed skills needs analysis, see respective sector pages.
